Tonight’s comedy album is Washington is For the Birds, a masterpiece of political humor dreamed up by writer George Atkins (Rocky and Bullwinkle and Madam’s Place) and California-based freelance music producer Hank Levine. The premise of this album was to take snippets of actual statements by famous ’60′s politicians like Lyndon Johnson, Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon and Bobby Kennedy and add a music background and chorus to make them sound as though they are “singing.” Atkins and Levine thought of this idea previously for the album Sing Along with JFK back in 1961, however, this album goes even further than the first. For one thing, Washington takes phrases unrelated to each other and strings them together to fit musical patterns as heard in the marvelous opener “Lady,” which has LBJ singing “the water we drink, the food we eat are threatened by pollution. So Lady, let us be on our way,” backed by a lilting chorus and orchestra. Also, Atkins and Levine expand the satire a bit to include at least one track where the chorus calls forth a response from the soloists instead of vice versa (“It’s Pain to Train a Texan from the Plain”–inspired by My Fair Lady‘s “The Rain in Spain”) and the final track (“The Wedding”) changes tempo several times to keep things interesting and hilarious. This is truly one of the greatest unknown gems of ’6os political comedy and would lead to sampling projects like The George W Bush Singers decades later. Source: DamnThatOjeda

01 Lady02 The Humphrey-Johnson Tap Routine03 Good Evening, Welcome Neighbors04 Return To Proven Ways (The Rev BM Goldwater)05 The Immortal Words Of LBJ06 It's Pain To Train A Texan From The Plain07 Be Forthright, Bobby Kennedy08 You Don't Have Nixon To Kick Around Anymore09 Lynda And Luci Lullaby10 The Wedding

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